


Tempting Fate

by Anonymous



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types, Return to Treasure Island (TV 1996)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Dark Magic, Druidism, Hope that's okay, M/M, Magic, The Romans, This somehow came out very dark, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11857698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/





	Tempting Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My_Trex_has_fleas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Trex_has_fleas/gifts).



The man wasn’t afraid. 

His blue eyes watched Ross calmly from beneath a mass of blond curls twisting around his face. Copious amounts of alcohol he’d been fed didn’t appear to have dulled his sharp and perceptive gaze one bit. He had been washed and clothed in ceremonial robes as was required, though his wrists were bound once again.

For now. 

The man’s name was simply Jim. Many across the land knew it by now. 

Boudicca’s only son. Everybody knew of her daughters, brutally raped by the Romans, knew of the queen who swore to avenge their pain with the blood of a hundred thousand legionnaires; few knew she had a son.

How long has it been now? Ten, fifteen years? Ross was surprised he survived this long, running from the Romans, running from his own people. Even today, there were many here on Anglesey, who were crying out for his blood – a poor recompense for tens of thousands condemned to their death by his mother and a Roman offensive, which took the country by a storm.

There would be no mercy blow for this man.

In a way tough, Ross supposed that his sacrifice was a mercy in its own right. A prince who could never have his kingdom, his lands or people. A son and brother, who had been forced to watch the shame of his own family. A fugitive who could never be safe. 

He ignored a quiet sense of wrongness stirring in the pit of his stomach. They didn’t have a choice now anyway.

“Get on with it, you bastard,” the man snarled, raising his bound hands. Nobody could cross the Boundary, who wasn’t free and willing to take the plunge.

Ross nodded and got to cutting the bonds. Jim would make a good sacrifice: strong and kicking in throes of his death for a long time, perhaps allowing Ross to slip behind him into the other world, so he could ask the gods some burning questions to which the urgently needed answers.

The Romans besieged the fort for over a week now and when Ross left to perform the ritual they have just crashed through the fortifications. It was only a matter of time before they found the grove with its sacred pond.

Around them the chant increased in power as a fine rope slipped around Jim’s neck, and Ross picked up the ancient obsidian blade. The man would die a three-fold death.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, feeling the Power flow through him, sensing the death and fear nearby, the anger of the trees, his own connection to the Spirits and… something. Something burning and undeniable in its existence, drawing him in.

“Breathe out,” he whispered in the man’s ear and something like lust stirred in the pit of Ross’ stomach when Jim obeyed, air leaving him on a soft exhale, as the life he must have defended so fiercely for over a decade now was placed freely in his hands. 

He must have known the ritual, would have watched his mother perform it before. Blue eyes open so he could see his own death and beyond, trusting Ross to take his life, to make it feel right for him, his body stretching taut as the druid yanked on the garrotte.

There was no hiding where Ross was. He felt everything – the terrifying other world slipping closer to take the sacrifice from him, elation and awe of the worshippers… Jim. Something about this man… He felt the low swell of desire, had to acknowledge it, a deep, primal need which he couldn’t understand or quell. Jim, dying at his hands, body spread, his mind open for Ross. It twined with and transcended the sexual need, pulled him into his Power, magnified and made him revel in the moment.

It was wrong. The sense that he was going against something bigger, greater than himself shot sharp through him, twined inexplicably with arousal as he held a life willingly given in his hands. This has never happened before, killing never once brought him pleasure, only peace and focus required to follow Across.

But then this wasn’t about killing; it was about life. This specific life laid out for him.

He felt both their muscles tremble as Jim fought to hold himself still, to follow through without resistance, watched the dagger poised against his throat.

Jim was right on the edge, slipping, slipping, mind opening to the unseen and Ross wanted him in that moment, just like this, capable of understanding everything, like he never wanted anyone.

He had to do it. Cut his throat open and push the head into the pond so the involuntary inhale of the dying body filled the spirit with its own blood and the sacred water. He knew he could follow this one, that Jim’s death would feel like completion, the door wide open for Ross to step through.

It would be worth it.

It wasn’t worth it.

He couldn’t deprive himself. 

Ross heard the screams and something in him poured into Jim and hauled him back with all his Power to keep him from the Gods. 

For himself. 

Their world was dead – he saw blood on the blade, didn’t know when he drew it, couldn’t tell if he slit the throat as the ritual required – and no amount of sacrifice was going to change that. They could die with the world in which they lived; or they could live in a new one.

Then – darkness and nothingness as they crashed through the Boundary, but wrong, all wrong.

“Which way?” Jim asked, lost and quiet, and Ross wondered if beneath his gods, there was something deeper, another level, more primal and basic. Forces without names, older than time, dressed by each cult in turn: fate, love, hatred, fear, hope… 

In the end the Druid trembled before the Bigger Thing. And obeyed.

“Come here,” he said and fought death, with everything he had, for both of them.

Breath. They choked on it in synch as two rough hands hauled them out of the sacred water and back into the world of the living simultaneously. Words in a foreign speech, which they didn’t understand, as they coughed and spluttered into rotting leaves and peat.

But their hands found each other and somehow neither could let go.

Something happened out there. And whatever it was, it tied them together.

“I can’t believe you botched my own execution!” Jim rasped out, fingers gingerly touching the shallow cut on his neck, which should have opened it from side to side.

“Sacrifice,” Ross corrected automatically, stunned and confused, still reeling from the combination of magic, lust and danger.

Jim started laughing.


End file.
